I'm getting ready to start work on a house, and was curious if anybody remodeled a bathroom that made it more shaver friendly at all. Any and all suggestions are welcome, and of course pictures would be great!

Yes - Light all around the face not just from above and a heated mirror (mine's linked to the light) these make a world of difference. Also a shelf to store your brushes while they are drying in a location that isn't going to be knocked etc.

(09-17-2016, 07:04 PM)tRSP1 Wrote: I'm getting ready to start work on a house, and was curious if anybody remodeled a bathroom that made it more shaver friendly at all. Any and all suggestions are welcome, and of course pictures would be great!

We remodeled (do-it-yourself project) a powder room ( roughly ten feet long, three feet wide, sink at one end, commode at the other end (under a window), pocket — i.e., sliding— door on one side) in the second half of 2010. While the overall project was a success (see pictures below), the truly innovative aspect, and the part of which I am most proud, was what we did about the lighting. Unfortunately, though not for lack of trying, it proved very difficult to photograph the way the new lighting works, so I can give only a hint by photos, supplemented by verbal description, below.

The previous owners of our home had installed a low-end round sink with a bargain bin faucet over a built-in cabinet at the end of the room opposite the outside window; they then had laid down Formica around the sink and as a backsplash, trimmed with chintzy chromed metal piping. The entirety of the bathroom walls were painted in several layers of paint, most recently, off-white (not quite ivory) oil-based semigloss paint, and the cabinet beneath the sink was painted in a gloss black paint, with the left door of the undersink cabinet having split vertically in the past and glued back together. Over the sink, a standard issue metal framed (rounded-edge) medicine cabinet with a mirror for the door was inset into the wall. The medicine cabinet even had a slot in the back for disposal of used razor blades. Above the medicine cabinet was a very cheap light, other than the window, the only light in the room: a very inexpensive fisture that accommodated two incandescent light bulbs (maximum 60w each) mounted horizontally, weight-lifter’s dumbbell style, with the round ends of the globes facing the two side walls. A square-cornered U-profile frosted glass, affixed to the fixture by a single knurled brass nut squarely in the middle, diffused the light from the light bulbs, and allowed flow-through ventilation of the bulbs through the uncovered ends.

As it turned out, the light fixture was the one part of the powder room that we left almost intact. (That surprised us, also.)

Here is the sink end of the powder room after we had stripped the paint from the walls, removed the old sink, removed all of the formica cladding, and painted the (3/4 inch? 1 inch?) plywood of the counter with Laticrete Hydro Ban waterproof sealant (the green stuff).

Here is the same view after we had installed a new sink and faucet, replaced the old medicine cabinet with a frameless mirror medicine cabinet, tiled a new (and taller) backsplash where the Formica backsplash had been, and (more about this below) covered the walls with a highly reflective foil-based textured German wallpaper. The reflection in the mirror of the window over the commode shows, in the lower pane of the window, a secondary reflection of the “dumbbell” style light fixture. Because of the very high contrast when the light is turned on, making a direct photo of the fixture in on-mode problematic, so this is the only photo of the light fixture itself in this set. As more fully explained below, the light from the fixture now is focused on the wallpaper-covered side walls.

Third, this image shows (part of) the undersink cabinet, now painted gloss white and with new door pulls, with silver metallic paint in the separator between sink and cabinet; and (importantly) a view of the wallpaper around the medicine cabinet, illuminated only by the window light (it was just before noon on a bright mid-winter day with “cold” sunlight) behind the camera, showing the reflective qualities of the wallpaper.

In the light fixture we replaced the former omnidirectional 60w incandescent light bulbs with very directional 2700K° 8w LED floodlights, pointing directly at the side walls. The textured surface of the wallpaper diffuses the light thoroughly, and, together with the secondary reflections off the bright white painted ceiling and the secondary reflections off the mirror itself, the entire room is bathed in a bright, but almost shadowless (as may be seen in the second of the three photos), soft light. No harsh shadows, yet satisfactorily bright, and uses only 16 watts. Win, win, win.

love Mel's den. I have a frameless cabinet too and made it huge 24 x 30 from Kohler with a sliding close up mirror. Put my own blade disposal notch in the wall and framed it with a couple cabinets. You can never have enough storage as your den grows I still have to put soaps and a/s in another room. For lighting i have 3 led aimed appropriately and a couple regular lights with good bulbs. Only wish i had more room for the vanity and could have used a larger rectangular sink. i would suggest you find something special to you to put in the den like maybe proximity faucet; just something you will enjoy for years to come every morning. Ravi's undercounter pull outs are a perfect example of this. i put in infloor heat for cold Oregon mornings.

(09-17-2016, 07:04 PM)tRSP1 Wrote: I'm getting ready to start work on a house, and was curious if anybody remodeled a bathroom that made it more shaver friendly at all. Any and all suggestions are welcome, and of course pictures would be great!

We remodeled (do-it-yourself project) a powder room ( roughly ten feet long, three feet wide, sink at one end, commode at the other end (under a window), pocket — i.e., sliding— door on one side) in the second half of 2010. While the overall project was a success (see pictures below), the truly innovative aspect, and the part of which I am most proud, was what we did about the lighting. Unfortunately, though not for lack of trying, it proved very difficult to photograph the way the new lighting works, so I can give only a hint by photos, supplemented by verbal description, below.

The previous owners of our home had installed a low-end round sink with a bargain bin faucet over a built-in cabinet at the end of the room opposite the outside window; they then had laid down Formica around the sink and as a backsplash, trimmed with chintzy chromed metal piping. The entirety of the bathroom walls were painted in several layers of paint, most recently, off-white (not quite ivory) oil-based semigloss paint, and the cabinet beneath the sink was painted in a gloss black paint, with the left door of the undersink cabinet having split vertically in the past and glued back together. Over the sink, a standard issue metal framed (rounded-edge) medicine cabinet with a mirror for the door was inset into the wall. The medicine cabinet even had a slot in the back for disposal of used razor blades. Above the medicine cabinet was a very cheap light, other than the window, the only light in the room: a very inexpensive fisture that accommodated two incandescent light bulbs (maximum 60w each) mounted horizontally, weight-lifter’s dumbbell style, with the round ends of the globes facing the two side walls. A square-cornered U-profile frosted glass, affixed to the fixture by a single knurled brass nut squarely in the middle, diffused the light from the light bulbs, and allowed flow-through ventilation of the bulbs through the uncovered ends.

As it turned out, the light fixture was the one part of the powder room that we left almost intact. (That surprised us, also.)

Here is the sink end of the powder room after we had stripped the paint from the walls, removed the old sink, removed all of the formica cladding, and painted the (3/4 inch? 1 inch?) plywood of the counter with Laticrete Hydro Ban waterproof sealant (the green stuff).

Here is the same view after we had installed a new sink and faucet, replaced the old medicine cabinet with a frameless mirror medicine cabinet, tiled a new (and taller) backsplash where the Formica backsplash had been, and (more about this below) covered the walls with a highly reflective foil-based textured German wallpaper. The reflection in the mirror of the window over the commode shows, in the lower pane of the window, a secondary reflection of the “dumbbell” style light fixture. Because of the very high contrast when the light is turned on, making a direct photo of the fixture in on-mode problematic, so this is the only photo of the light fixture itself in this set. As more fully explained below, the light from the fixture now is focused on the wallpaper-covered side walls.

Third, this image shows (part of) the undersink cabinet, now painted gloss white and with new door pulls, with silver metallic paint in the separator between sink and cabinet; and (importantly) a view of the wallpaper around the medicine cabinet, illuminated only by the window light (it was just before noon on a bright mid-winter day with “cold” sunlight) behind the camera, showing the reflective qualities of the wallpaper.

In the light fixture we replaced the former omnidirectional 60w incandescent light bulbs with very directional 2700K° 8w LED floodlights, pointing directly at the side walls. The textured surface of the wallpaper diffuses the light thoroughly, and, together with the secondary reflections off the bright white painted ceiling and the secondary reflections off the mirror itself, the entire room is bathed in a bright, but almost shadowless (as may be seen in the second of the three photos), soft light. No harsh shadows, yet satisfactorily bright, and uses only 16 watts. Win, win, win.

Super nice job, except for the plywood edge with staples in it. Need to cover it with a thin batting strip painted white. What kind of sink was there before?

(09-18-2016, 07:48 AM)TobyC Wrote: Super nice job, except for the plywood edge with staples in it. Need to cover it with a thin batting strip painted white. What kind of sink was there before?

Actually, those artifacts are not staples. As you see, we found a sink that was exactly the width of the room between the walls — but this house was built 99 years ago, and the walls are no longer perfectly square. When we got the sink atop the former sink support counter, one side of the plywood stuck out about a quarter inch into the room below the front edge of the sink. I called in a friend who has a rotary saw to slice a very thin wedge off the front of the plywood, and what look like staples are the sawblade marks cutting across the edge of the ancient plywood. The marks were fairly shallow, and I thought that two coats of the thick paint that I used to paint the edge would be self-leveling. (I was wrong.)

In the first of the photos, you can see in the green Laticrete Hydro Ban area that there formerly was a rectangular cut-out in the center of the plywood. That is where the former drop-in porcelain-clad cast iron sink had been; the sink bowl was oval/round, and had a small counter-level rectangular skirt. Because the new sink sits atop the counter, and did not need the area of the rectangular cut-out for support, I filled the hole with some Hardibacker, covering the edges of the insert with mesh tape, for the sake of neatness.

(09-18-2016, 07:48 AM)TobyC Wrote: Super nice job, except for the plywood edge with staples in it. Need to cover it with a thin batting strip painted white. What kind of sink was there before?

Actually, those artifacts are not staples. As you see, we found a sink that was exactly the width of the room between the walls — but this house was built 99 years ago, and the walls are no longer perfectly square. When we got the sink atop the former sink support counter, one side of the plywood stuck out about a quarter inch into the room below the front edge of the sink. I called in a friend who has a rotary saw to slice a very thin wedge off the front of the plywood, and what look like staples are the sawblade marks cutting across the edge of the ancient plywood. The marks were fairly shallow, and I thought that two coats of the thick paint that I used to paint the edge would be self-leveling. (I was wrong.)

In the first of the photos, you can see in the green Laticrete Hydro Ban area that there formerly was a rectangular cut-out in the center of the plywood. That is where the former drop-in porcelain-clad cast iron sink had been; the sink bowl was oval/round, and had a small counter-level rectangular skirt. Because the new sink sits atop the counter, and did not need the area of the rectangular cut-out for support, I filled the hole with some Hardibacker, covering the edges of the insert with mesh tape, for the sake of neatness.

The Northridge earthquake woke a lot of people up, twice and museum earthquake wax was one of many obscure items along with safety strapping for hot water heaters, electronics and gas shut off wrenches filling hardware stores. I've always wondered if a countertop inclined a few degrees from edge to facing wall might help objects dropped or knocked over to avoid a conversation with the floor?

(09-18-2016, 12:43 PM)kav Wrote: The Northridge earthquake woke a lot of people up, twice and museum earthquake wax was one of many obscure items along with safety strapping for hot water heaters, electronics and gas shut off wrenches filling hardware stores. I've always wondered if a countertop inclined a few degrees from edge to facing wall might help objects dropped or knocked over to avoid a conversation with the floor?

Water going toward the wall instead of away from it would eventually cause problems.

(09-18-2016, 11:33 AM)RSP1 Wrote: Mel - thank you for such a detailed reply. The pictures certainly help! Also, thanks everybody else for the input. There are some good ideas here and I'll try to mash them together.

One other detail I did not mention in my long post of our DIY remodel, which did not mention specific products: Dow Corning 999-A is sold as a caulk, but it serves as a Swiss Army Knife kind of product in the remodeling. For instance, completely off-label, it is the perfect mastic to use for mounting tile to vertical walls. All of the tile work in our remodel was affixed to the wall with 999-A; it makes a tight and permanent bond. The grout between the tiles, appropriately for a wet environment, is epoxy grout, Laticreete SpectraLOCK, available in many colors to complement the tile colors.